About Me

Monday, November 24, 2008

Pen Meets PaperOpinion by Helge NomeSome things don't change. In the 1790ies, during the Napoleonic wars pirate ships, based in my home town of Kristiansand, Norway, preyed on the Baltic Sea trade supplying the British/American colony side of the conflict. My sister's investigations, while researching a book on the subject, revealed that some 400 American colonists were held for ransom in Kristiansand at one point, making the owners of local pirate ships wealthy men. Supertankers are currently being held for ransom in ports of Somalia, shanghaied by pirates in fast moving motor boats. And the party is on in the home communities of the pirates. In a recent interview, one fisherman turned pirate, stated that they were merely protecting the territorial waters of Somalia from illegal traffic and the dumping of toxic waste, as Somalia currently does not have a functional government. The difference between the two scenarios, separated in time by about 200 years, is that the King of Denmark/Norway gave the nod of approval to his pirates, whereas the puppet regime in Mogadishu is powerless to influence the behavior of local pirates.For several hundred years the European powers created colonies out of territories stretching across the surface of the globe in Africa, America and Asia. They co-opted local minority groups to work with them to establish regimes that were dependent on the colonizing nation to maintain political power over a given territory. This is precisely what has recently happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. And it has everything to do with the control of, and access to, rich energy sources.And now something else is happening, which is like an echo from the past and has been reported in “The Guardian” newspaper: “Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.

by Julian Borger, diplomatic editor(The Guardian)

The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, has warned that the controversial rise in land deals could create a form of "neo-colonialism", with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people.

Rising food prices have already set off a second "scramble for Africa". This week, the South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics announced plans to buy a 99-year lease on a million hectares in Madagascar. Its aim is to grow 5m tonnes of corn a year by 2023, and produce palm oil from a further lease of 120,000 hectares (296,000 acres), relying on a largely South African workforce. Production would be mainly earmarked for South Korea, which wants to lessen dependence on imports.”For a copy of the full article, check my blog http://helgenome.blogspot.com/ Some things don't change.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Rich governments and corporations are triggering alarm for the poor as they buy up the rights to millions of hectares of agricultural land in developing countries in an effort to secure their own long-term food supplies.

by Julian Borger, diplomatic editor(The Guardian)

The head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, has warned that the controversial rise in land deals could create a form of "neo-colonialism", with poor states producing food for the rich at the expense of their own hungry people.

Rising food prices have already set off a second "scramble for Africa". This week, the South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics announced plans to buy a 99-year lease on a million hectares in Madagascar. Its aim is to grow 5m tonnes of corn a year by 2023, and produce palm oil from a further lease of 120,000 hectares (296,000 acres), relying on a largely South African workforce. Production would be mainly earmarked for South Korea, which wants to lessen dependence on imports.

"These deals can be purely commercial ventures on one level, but sitting behind it is often a food security imperative backed by a government," said Carl Atkin, a consultant at Bidwells Agribusiness, a Cambridge firm helping to arrange some of the big international land deals.

Madagascar's government said that an environmental impact assessment would have to be carried out before the Daewoo deal could be approved, but it welcomed the investment. The massive lease is the largest so far in an accelerating number of land deals that have been arranged since the surge in food prices late last year.

"In the context of arable land sales, this is unprecedented," Atkin said. "We're used to seeing 100,000-hectare sales. This is more than 10 times as much."

At a food security summit in Rome, in June, there was agreement to channel more investment and development aid to African farmers to help them respond to higher prices by producing more. But governments and corporations in some cash-rich but land-poor states, mostly in the Middle East, have opted not to wait for world markets to respond and are trying to guarantee their own long-term access to food by buying up land in poorer countries.

According to diplomats, the Saudi Binladin Group is planning an investment in Indonesia to grow basmati rice, while tens of thousands of hectares in Pakistan have been sold to Abu Dhabi investors.

Arab investors, including the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, have also bought direct stakes in Sudanese agriculture. The president of the UEA, Khalifa bin Zayed, has said his country was considering large-scale agricultural projects in Kazakhstan to ensure a stable food supply.

Even China, which has plenty of land but is now getting short of water as it pursues breakneck industrialisation, has begun to explore land deals in south-east Asia. Laos, meanwhile, has signed away between 2m-3m hectares, or 15% of its viable farmland. Libya has secured 250,000 hectares of Ukrainian farmland, and Egypt is believed to want similar access. Kuwait and Qatar have been chasing deals for prime tracts of Cambodia rice fields.

Eager buyers generally have been welcomed by sellers in developing world governments desperate for capital in a recession. Madagascar's land reform minister said revenue would go to infrastructure and development in flood-prone areas.

Sudan is trying to attract investors for almost 900,000 hectares of its land, and the Ethiopian prime minister, Meles Zenawi, has been courting would-be Saudi investors.

"If this was a negotiation between equals, it could be a good thing. It could bring investment, stable prices and predictability to the market," said Duncan Green, Oxfam's head of research. "But the problem is, [in] this scramble for soil I don't see any place for the small farmers."

Alex Evans, at the Centre on International Cooperation, at New York University, said: "The small farmers are losing out already. People without solid title are likely to be turfed off the land."

Details of land deals have been kept secret so it is unknown whether they have built-in safeguards for local populations.

Steve Wiggins, a rural development expert at the Overseas Development Institute, said: "There are very few economies of scale in most agriculture above the level of family farm because managing [the] labour is extremely difficult." Investors might also have to contend with hostility. "If I was a political-risk adviser to [investors] I'd say 'you are taking a very big risk'. Land is an extremely sensitive thing. This could go horribly wrong if you don't learn the lessons of history."

Monday, November 17, 2008

Pen Meets PaperOpinion by Helge NomeThe question of nuclear power in Alberta is not going away. In fact, it has come home to roost on my own doorstep, literally: The location of the proposed nuclear power station has just been changed from the shores of Lac Cardinal (near Grimshaw in the Peace River Country) to a place north of the Town of Peace River, a couple of kilometers to the west of the river. It just happens to be about one kilometer from the doorstep of family owned property there. I am on the public record for criticizing the previous location on Lac Cardinal as being totally illogical as is was in the middle of a duck breeding habitat, close to Provincial Park, on the shores of a shallow and sensitive lake, on top of a sensitive aquifer (The Grimshaw Gravels), and some 20 odd kilometers from the only practical water supply which is the Peace River with its massive upstream dam. I guess that's what you get for being a smart apple. I will let the proponent of the 4000+ Megawatt operation introduce itself: “

Bruce Power Alberta is an all-Canadian partnership among TransCanada Corporation of Calgary, Cameco Corporation of Saskatoon and BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust, a trust established by the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System and based in Toronto.”If generated, a good deal of all that power will likely be used to extract oil from the tar sands in the Peace area and beyond. The process of public consultation which is included in the application process for the plant will likely take about three years according to company estimates. What remains to be decided, however, is whether Albertans want nuclear power established in the province. One power station would open the doors for more. How safe is nuclear power? What are the risks? The answers are radically different, depending upon who you listen to and the debate has been raging in the Peace Country for well over a year already. The Alberta Government is comfortably sitting on its hands at this time, waiting to see where the political wind is blowing. Another question is: Will the Americans want to buy “dirty' oil from Alberta? The answer is: They already do and would likely want more of the same if the Middle East blows up in their face.So, like it or not, the nuclear question has not gone away, and has to be faced collectively by Albertans. And this writer in particular.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Pen Meets PaperOpinion by Helge NomeAs this edition of the Mountainer goes to press, Canadians are remembering those that lost their lives in armed conflicts during the last hundred years. The second World War is starkly real to me as it literally came in with my mothers milk: I was conceived in 1942 and born in 1943 during the height of the war in German occupied Norway. In later years, my mother told me about smuggling eggs under her coat on the train, coming back to the city from a farm belonging to family friends. Strict rationing forbade common folk from getting extra food on the side. My father was a dairy factory inspector for a farmers' cooperative during the war and used to travel around the country quite a bit. One morning he happened to share breakfast table at the hotel with a young cocky German officer of the occupation force who remarked on the lack of resistance the Germans had encountered during their invasion. He uttered words to the effect of “I thought you were tough Vikings in Norway?” To which my father replied “We have become civilized in the last 1000 years”.Unfortunately, that is not the case for most people on the planet, as evidenced by ongoing war and strife during the 20th century with no abatement in sight in the early part of the 21st century.When I was young I had a hard time figuring out why decent people would turn on one another with the sole object of destroying the other person. I concluded that there must be some kind of insanity behind this behaviour. When we were kids we used to play in bunkers and dugouts left behind by the occupation forces, unbeknown to our parents, which was just as well as the supporting timbers were in an advanced state of decay at the time (early 1950ies). We even found a pouch of wartime tobacco in one of them and got well and truly sick when we tried to smoke the stuff. To this day, I am convinced that it was not real tobacco at all. I can well remember walking around along the edge of a large circular gun turret made of concrete and steel and imagining controlling the great gun that commanded the entrance to Kristiansand Harbour. We also played in the remains of a castle on a small island that used to command the same, albeit smaller, area during the Napoleonic wars when English raiders were kept at bay. (Norway/Denmark participated in that conflict on the side of the French).So, like it or not, “War” is in my bones and it is truly a detestable business: My father told me that the Gestapo had commandeered a house on a high spot on the edge of the town of Kristiansand and used it as a place to torture suspected resistance members. The windows were deliberately kept open so that their screams could be heard all over town in order to discourage would-be recruits. The occupation forces also had a policy of shooting 10 Norwegians, picked up at random, for each German that was killed by resistance people. One German commander, in charge of the occupiers of a community in Northern Norway was a decent man, and refused to carry out this order. He did his best throughout the occupation to protect local people and developed a good relationship with them. After the end of the war he and his family were invited back and he was celebrated as a hero.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Pen Meets PaperOpinion by Helge NomeThis (Monday) morning I tuned in to the local radio broadcast over the Internet from Kristiansand, Norway, my old home town, and listened to the local news. The main item was a drop in the value of homes in September alone, of an average of 4% in the city and 5% in the surrounding municipalities. And real estate agents are having a hard time making ends meet due to the low volume in turnover of properties. The similarity in the story here and what is taking place right in our own back yard is amazing. Particularly when you realize that Kristiansand is on the other side of the globe. That just goes to show you how interconnected human beings are. And when I read comments on the Internet to stories about the faltering economy of the United States many, if not most, of them reflect my own sentiments to a tee. I can't help but believe that we are, in our nature, very similar to those flying ants who migrate in huge numbers, over a large area, during a very narrow window of time. Like one great unified organism with a life and mind of its own. The ants then proceed to shed their wings and form relatively independent colonies in new locations. Airborne seeds of plants do much the same thing in their own way.What is happening all around us in the economic life of nations has been in the works for a long time.The insanity of the frenzied rush towards self gratification, facilitated by readily available credit for all but a few, has been understood by most people for a long time, without having been acknowledged by same. When the inevitable consequences became evident in the adverse effects on the world's climate, it became more difficult to sweep the evidence of the collective insanity under the carpet.And now, at last, we have hit the wall, just like the man with heart disease who chose to ignore his symptoms for the longest time and ends up having a major heart attack. We can play the blame game and accuse the corrupt bankers of causing all our problems. But the fact is that their guilt lies in giving us what we wanted, while raking in a major share of the loot for themselves in the process, without any regard for the consequences. Their mindset has hardly been different from our own. So we are all in this stew together, like it or not, and the central banks' choice of throwing more money at the problem is only making it worse by strengthening the balance sheets of the biggest banks out there, so that they can gobble up the smaller ones. The net result is that fewer and fewer people are in control of more and more public resources and that is not good news for small folks like you and I. The time has come to get connected in a different way than before and take charge of the economic affairs of the nations we belong to, rather than letting strangers determine our fate.